I recently encountered the SocialPoint Audience Engagement Platform at the MSAE (now Associations North) Annual Meeting & Expo. Voted one of the Top 10 new innovations of 2015, this digital experience can turn your attendees into active participants through Trivia Games and ‘Social Walls’ to Live Polls and Speaker Q&As. I took my turn at Social Media Trivia and failed miserably, but was determined to get a few questions correct and my name on the leaderboard before moving to the next booth.

During my time I was able to speak with Liz Conners, Business Development Director of Interactive Meeting Technology, LLC, about the widespread gamification of content in the meetings and events industry. As we enjoyed a few rounds of trivia and watched my tweets come across the Social Wall, I knew I had to learn more.

Samuel Smith, Managing Director of Interactive Meeting Technology, LLC in Minneapolis, MN, gave us a more in depth look at the SocialPoint Audience Engagement Platform. “We want to support our clients in audience engagement experiences for all events and we know they aren’t one size fits all…we design and create for each client.” Smith told us about many events they have engaged audiences at including open house events, college graduations, and of course tradeshows. SocialPoint’s ‘progressive web app’ or ‘instant app’ is web-based from a URL, which allows for a multitude of possibilities to be utilized without attendees having to download an additional app to their ever growing smartphone library. ​

Smith and his team work to “reduce barriers of participation and match the participation experience to the environment.” This means that the SocialPoint platform can ‘read’ data from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and SMS (text), opening up the audience to use the form of social communication that works best for them without accidentally building an unintentional barrier for some attendees. Smith explained the use at a recent graduation ceremony in which the large screen behind the stage was formatted as a SocialPoint ‘Social Wall’ allowing students and family to send photos of the student to the board as they walked across the stage to receive their diploma, he said “most of the students used Instagram but the parents and other family and friends could send texts with photos” with them all coming together across the big screen in real time.

SocialPoint can also be used as “easy gamification to show the story of your event,” according to Smith. ‘Social Media Leaderboards’ can be placed strategically throughout your event showing names of social media content leaders. Smith further added that trivia platforms are “successful for marketers to use at tradeshows.” It can “teach about products and services in a fun way….[and] capture leads.” This is a huge time savings for anyone who still owns a business card roll-o-dex. SocialPoint allows you to download contacts from your trivia game into your preferred database for simplistic use after your event.

When asked if SocialPoint has seen an increase in use in 2016 and if it is projecting an increase for 2017, Smith gave a resounding, “Yes!” He estimated that based on a recent survey he had read that roughly 56% of planners polled don’t use event apps or plan to, “they are looking for other social media tools.” People are still early to the utilization of event tech and standards are being vetted out, but “there is a thirst for more experience,” as Smith understands. With 20 solution combos capable of creating many diverse experiences and meeting a wide range of budgets, the SocialPoint Audience Engagement Platform is apt to be a real prize to meeting and event planners, or should we consult the ‘Virtual Prize Wheel?’